--quoted from DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, NEW ENGLAND DIVISION CORPS OF ENGINEERS, Formerly Used Defence Site (FUDS) Document.

Peaks Island is about a twenty minute to half hour ferry ride out from Portland. The island is fairly well populated, with most people living in the small town at one end of the island. More houses are spread out along the coast, with fewer found towards the center of the island. The coast is fairly rugged with rock outcroppings and no real beaches. Inland is hilly open forests, with some wet lowlands overgrown with vines and underbrush. Blueberries can be found in some areas of the rocky hills, and rasberries in the lower coastal areas.

The crumbled ruins of WWI and WWII era bunkers can be found all throughout the overgrown woods, with some batteries and bunkers still standing, though some of them have been turned into private residences. Of the five observation towers, only the two of them on the hill in the middle of the island are worth looking at. The others are right on the coast and are only one or two stories tall. Most of those ones are on private land and have been turned into storage sheds. One inland tower is used as a broadcast station for Island Cable TV, that one is kept locked up pretty tight (though a local explorer told us it was unlocked just two days before we were there). The door to the other tower is cemented over, but a small window on the back has been left open. Of the other old military buildings on the island, the only ones left that have much too them are Battery Steel and the Battery Steel Controls Bunker.